In this May 28, 1999 file photo, a new birth control pill container designed to look like a woman's makeup compact. (AP Photo/Mike Derer, File)

(Newser)
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How to slash the abortion rate? Time points to one way: Allow women to get a full year’s supply of birth control at one time, instead of doling it out once a month or, occasionally, once every three months. A new study shows that when you do that, odds of an abortion fall 46% and odds of a pregnancy fall 30%. Allowing women to pick up a year’s supply in one visit means she won’t have to go back to the clinic multiple times, thereby making it easier for her to stick to a birth-control regimen.

“Having sex without using a method of birth control is one of many kinds of risks people take in their lives, like driving too fast or driving without a seatbelt. If seatbelts were given out as piecemeal as contraception, few people would use them,” says the lead author of the study. Giving out more pills at one time is “a cost-savings thing, but it's also a quality-of-care issue—and it's the right thing to do. People don't stop having sex when their pills run out.”

"To Cut Abortion Rate, Give Out More Birth Control" and in other news, to be less stupid, be less conservative. Film at eleven.

oldgoat

Feb 26, 2011 6:36 PM CST

Trouble is many of the conservative types believe that birth control is nothing more than abortion anyway. Besides it just encourages the woman to have sex. Don't you know that not having that pill will cause a woman to keep her legs closed and eleiminate unwanted pregs? At least that is the thinking of the right wingnuts.

atbov2

Feb 26, 2011 4:10 PM CST

You don't think women can monitor their own health? If I get a year's worth of birth control and say after four months I start having side-effects, I can go back to my doctor and request a lower hormone dosage. I could exchange the remainder of my year's supply for the lower dosage and then try that. But no, women have to go to the doctor every month or 3 months so the doctor can make sure she's OK. You honestly think that women are so deperate to have pregnancy-worry-free-sex that they would ignore side-effects and not seek treatment? You buy any over-the-counter medicine, advil, sleeping pills, vitamins, and the bottles all say if you experience side-effects seek medical treament. Why should this be any different for birth control pills? Because women have historically been reproductively-controlled to keep us in our fucking places.